Parshat Mishpatim: The Mystery of Rephidim - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] Perik you test begins baka - Ashley she the third month but say Spanish real merits mitzrayim from the time that the Jewish people left the land of myth Ryan third month because we always count Nissan as month number one in the Torah Neeson ERC bond but yom has a bomb in Farsi night on that day they came to mid Barcena in other words the Torah is telling me when did they arrive at the foot of Mount Sinai Rosh Hodesh Sivan biomas on Rosh Chodesh Sivan they got the Torah they got the Ten Commandments a week later on the 6th of Siva which is the holiday of swart according to one opinion actually on the seventh of seven and I will discuss at a much later date the interesting problem that if you follow the view of the tongue I am that the Ten Commandments were given on the seventh of seven why do we celebrate show us the wrong day in other words nobody's arguing about Jewish Lewis is when Shiva says but the McLucas is did we get the Ten Commandments on the 6th of c1 or did we get the Ten Commandments on the seventh of seven now if we got the Ten Commandments on the sixth of seven we are celebrating Shavuos on the day that we got the ten commandments which is what we've told all of our children throughout their lives but if you hold that we got the Ten Commandments on the seventh of seven we are actually celebrating Shavuos on the day that we didn't get to Ten Commandments so what is it that we are celebrating okay I'll let you cogitate over that question until show us and then we'll get to it well get to it later in the year but be this it may look ulla ulla whether the Ten Commandments were the sixth to the seventh we got to mid bar semi on Rosh Hodesh Siva okay good that's pasta Calif PASOK base then says but you Sumer feed them it seems to be going backwards where already talking they arrived at mid birthday night the sickbay says but used to Murphy them they journeyed from roof Edom well we know that we know Rafi dem was the stop before Sinai because that's where I Moloch attacked us you'll recall in the end of Hashanah so why repeat the information that we know from the end of Michalis and then it says valve o midv rc9 and they came to mid Barcena but I know that also that's what pasa collip said and then it says yet again by yahoo knew by mid bore and they encamped in the mid bar well if they came there that's what they would do and then it repeats yet again by Iran show me Israel Megaton so the problem basically is pisaq base is absolutely redundant there is not a single bit of new information that you directly get from project base pisaq al the underbrush Allah already told me they left Rafina Pusser caliph tells me they came to mid bar scene I brush kodesh even so why do I need plastic paste and then say they left for feedom they came to minbar see night they encamped in the desert and then it repeats again but yeaa and a guitar they encamped next to the mountain so there's a very very beautiful shot from the or hiya Makar this new york i am is of course roof cam benitar great great a god all from morocco who who came to you shall i him he's buried and her as a sim and his your side exactly does it still attracts thousands of people was it's in timeless thousands of people to the my rosacea and he's one of the relatively few yeah there was one right test first time was right and he's one of the relatively few before him that we still use colleague called the appellation Kadosh or hoc I am how could I she'll often say and he says the following he says the purpose of classic Bayes this is parakiya test plastic base is not to discuss the geographical movement of the Jewish people we already know they left Rafi them and came to her Sina but it's discussing the spiritual journey the Jewish people had to take before they became worthy of matin tohe and he divides plastic bags into a nice four-step plan there are four steps we must take in order to be worthy of receiving God's Torah now of course these four steps are much easier said than actually done but he gives you a very easy to state at least four-step plan step number one you must travel from the place called Rafi Dib now we know Rafi them is an oasis we know Rafi them is we're a Malik attacked us but because I'll say we feed them it's also a symbolic name Rafi diem is an abbreviation or an acronym for the phrase Roth foo yah diam their hands were loose their grasp was weak and this refers to the idea that there's a fundamental concept that a Moloch has power over us only when there is some type of flaw within us that makes us vulnerable to our Moloch in fact the Mitzvah of the Torah Eradicator Malik is not only referring to the external of Malik but it refers to characteristics within us that make us vulnerable to our Moloch that is how we fulfill makiato Moloch and because I'll say what made the Jewish people vulnerable to our Moloch at least in part was the idea of ruff ooh Rafi Tim Roth foo year de hem min a toga now what does that mean this is an idiom when you care about somebody let's say you're carrying your baby across a microphone so you're gonna hold your baby very very tight so the more you care about something or someone the tighter you hold on today when you don't care about something that much your grasp might be very very loose you know you don't even know it's in your hand you may drop it it makes no difference so the phrase with young yo diam refers to a certain attitude that a person has towards religion towards spirituality towards Torah that is even if a person keeps the toha in the mitzvot they might do so with coldness with indifference with complacency with boredom with a lack of excitement as we say in Yiddish a lack of Gershman that is the attitude of rafinha dynam and when there is riff Jelena diam we become vulnerable to our Moloch and that is what the Torah means when it says but ye sumer feed them if you want to accept a Shems toga you must leave complacency indifference boredom then you must try to inculcate we must try to inculcate it within ourselves and within our personalities a notion of simcha excitement in a bow decision now this is it this is indeed a a very very significant challenge you know because even if a person keeps the mitts votes personally merits stick you know of course let me be the first to say better to keep the mitzvahs in a complacent non-committed way than not to do it at all meaning I'm not no one is saying don't do the mince words unless you can do them at the highest possible level but still all of us are prone to the idea that our vote that Hashem can sometimes become very sterile atrophied dry fossilized petrified estrogen stone because and of course this was our etched in stone but but our heart should not be etched in stone and in many ways this is what casitas came to bring back to Claudius rail much more of an emphasis on the enthusiasm and excitement of Odessa shell and the aura Khayyam writes by year sumir feed them you have to leave Rafi them leave the riff Jana diam to truly receive God's story now the EMA says the greater of sadoc who lived much later website aggregate christina grimmie makes the same point but from a different phrase not from her freedom but in partial Sookie say say where the torii reviews when I'm always good to us there's a phrase I shared kora Buderus which in English is translated am a lake encountered you in the way but Rashi brings a Madras that quarter can also mean made you cold carska made you cold and the muscle that Rashi brings is when the Jewish people left Smith's ryeom the whole world was afraid of them the whole world was afraid to know there were ten plagues in Korea observe you don't mess with the Jews think bad things happen to you if you mess with the Jews there were like a boiling scalding hot bath nobody would even touch it they wouldn't put their finger in it a Moloch was the very first nation that jumped into a boiling scalding hot bath understandably they got burnt but they made it less hot for the next guy because once they broke the aura of invincibility it made it more possible for someone else to take the next step in other words the attitude is oh well they they attack the Jews there you can win but you know but at least they attack them maybe we can do it as well so that's the meaning a Moloch made you cold that's what Rashi says Rev sudo goes with the same etymology made you cold but he runs with it in a different way that a Moloch represents a coldness of the heart that when your heart is cold in a voting session then you become vulnerable tomorrow the same thing that was also in the word repeat him we have subtle greens into a share course but Dara of course it's interesting I may have mentioned this story before that you know I always have a feeling that Professor degrees being a bit autobiographical here never of Southwark was was not a born into a casino family of Semak was born as amidst negation and he was a very very brilliant person he knew no Shas and and post him at a very very young age and when he was in his early 20s he had occasion to travel and he met one of the casinos rubies the issue it sir who was later popularized by Carlebach but but the interest was actually reflux Rabi it was it's always a very interesting tragic story rhapsodic demanded a a divorce from his wife because he thought she shook someone's hands and iced or whatever it is so he was very very Cano in those things and she refused so he was trying to get a head ser of Mayor robbing him of a hundred of money to allow him to divorce her without her consent and as a result this young genius had occasion to meet many many people in Europe and he became across one to say I don't want to be my rock on this story so much I just want to say that Rosado was married twice after that is he was widower and then he married the third time he had no children from any of his marriages and he said at the end of his life that it's because of the harsh way that he treated his first wife not in a proper way that I shouldn't punish him and again if you if you read Rev Southwark you can actually sense how painful it was that he did not have shown it was not just I mean it says you know it's hard for everybody but there was a certain whole spiritual dimension that he saw in this and he said it was because of the way he treated very very deep deep regret she did marry and she did have a family he was not so but but be it as it may he did become a constant as a result and the story goes that he went to the ich but Sir just hear me didn't need to know these Kritzer ones you just went to hear a sue - leash instruction and the issue it's fear was giving aid Russia and in the middle of Southwark had to borrow a a Christian term he had an epiphany and in the middle he started crying he said my heart is on fire and then he started clasping his head and he says all I was was a brain but I want to be a person I don't want to just be a brain and he totally totally changed he still became I mean obviously as a cerebral enormous Tomba kharkom he remained the enormous Thomas Holcomb that he was but he understood very much the idea that a person could be so enrapt sometimes in mental operations that one loses sight of the greater more important goal of connecting to our other Sparkle and thus he spoke about the idea of Amalek being connected to the coldness of the hearts that one has to have a warm heart one has to be filled with passion of Accession year accession and without trying to fully address a very complicated phenomenon part of the issue there are many many reasons but part of the issue of the kids at risk phenomenon that the Orthodox world has become more aware of of children going off the Dera there are many many many reasons and summer summer really not even reasons things just happen we can't always give a reason for anything but part of it is that if the if the it'sh kites in the home or in the school or the Achieva is not conveyed with a warmth and with a joy if it's conveyed as a burden some sense of things you can't do don't do this don't do this don't do this don't do this and all you're doing is taking things away one after another but there's no sense of the sympa in serving Hashem then at some point they person might rebel and say who needs it I don't want it anymore right so so the issue of this is what we call in the industry you know like we talked about keyword for kokum drawing people who are far from Hashem back to mitzvahs there's also a need for Kirov crow him even people who are absolutely religious in observance we all need kind of a jumpstart in to embrace Judaism with joy and excitement and and and the like now again this is the whole conflict because obviously sometimes when you there's a pendulum here when you emphasize the subjective religious experience of joy you sometimes have become less conscientious in halakhah which is also a mistake when you emphasize the meticulous following of the rules you sometimes leave the realm of joy and simcha so as is always the case the truth is somewhere in the middle in which you have to embrace both of those ideas but at least roofied them the rsam says is leave Rafi them leave complacency embrace the Torah embrace a Shem with passion fact hear dibala tonya makes a very very interesting point about Latanya writes there's a difference he uses to it the way he uses the words as a bit in introducing Craddock but he uses two different words for certain sadness in serving God one is a good sadness and one is a bad sadness one term he uses is Marie Rose the bitterness of spirits in which I feel pain that I am separated from God that's called Marie Russ and the other is called hot sauce hot sauce which living means sadness is the insensitivity of not feeling anything like a dead stone so the ballot Anya writes although dominantly one's attitude should be simpler but it is appropriate at different times of day to feel a yearning and a sadness that you're not close to God but that yearning and sadness is very much alive it is a feeling it is a striving it is a yearning in which you cry out to a Shem I want to be connected to you he says that is healthy and that is necessary because that expresses the yearnings of a soul that wants to grow and although if you have too much of that you get depressed and sad and that's not good and therefore you need to have simpler most of the time but there are times which is always amazing Mina Tania he seems to always be describing you know you could turn your emotions on and off like a faucet like 15 minutes a day you know you're supposed to have be sad and you cry to Hashem and then the rest of the day you'd be happy yes most of us can't really work on that particular level but he says that's Marie hrus Marie Rose is a sadness that's alive it's like a living thing I want to be connected but then there's another type of sadness which is a deadening kind of a weight in which you just don't feel he says that that is not good because that does not lead you to connect to us in that just causes you to fall deeper and deeper and deeper so leaving Rafi them is to embrace with love and with fear and with joy and with enthusiasm and with passion a bow decision [Music] [Applause]